So it is New Years Day. 2008. Another year, another day, another symbolic chance to start afresh with good resolutions and the things one should or should not do, if there ever was any time to change things. Personally, I don't believe that grand dates symbolise opportunities for change - rather they symbolise our failings to stick to the idealised commitments made during drunk party nights. And being here it is no different - we are still on the Esperanza and we are still searching for the Japanese whalers. Yes, most of us are hungover from last night's party and we are still looking for the whalers and still determined to make their life as difficult as possible. What has changed for us is merely the date and time. And the mood is entirely what we make of it and it has been rather subdued - no great Christmas frenzy, and no great end of the year atmosphere at all.
However, there are a few changes. First off, we have reached the Antarctic ice shelf today, bright white pack-ice as far as the eye can travel, and a calm sea consisting of cakes of ice loosely held together by a thick, sticky soup of freezing water. We were greeted by a sleeping seal and a group of penguins who gawked at us incredulously. A few days ago, we must have looked very similar, bar the cameras when we saw our first icebergs - giant blocks of blueish ice in strange shapes floating in the ocean, one of them being a huge shelf over ten metres high and about 15 miles by 25 miles wide. It is strange to think that there is an iceberg floating past that has the dimensions of a mid-sized city like Hamburg or Manchester, and that before the season is over, it will have dissolved into nothing, melted into the ocean. Frank our captain said a wise thing about them - we are the only people who will ever see these icebergs in their current form. Should anyone ever see the same berg at a later date, it will have changed its appearance either by melting down, breaking up or simply turning upside down as the waves chip away at its icy body.
The pack-ice is making intense crunching sounds against the hull as the ship shudders and pushes its way forward, and I have several hundreds of pictures to go through from the last few days. Being the spoilt photographer that I am, I wish I could have packed my own personal geek to do all the post-production and backup tasks for me as the computer time is beginning to clash with the time I wish I had to spend on deck shooting. But this is wishful thinking and I am not being paid to idle and muse about things that aren't here, I am paid to document things that are. Me being the quality-queen that I am, I can't imagine letting someone else work on my images anyway, so I guess from now on I am in for long hours in the cold during 'daytime' for shooting pictures, and more long hours at 'night' for post-producing and publishing them. Watch this space for more pictures from the ice soon.
To you all - I wish you a good and effective hangover cure for the first day of the New Year - may it be a good one for all of us.
Take care and keep writing! Love, Jiri
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